It was a small, neat place. The houses were set around a large green, comfortably shaded by three ancient plane trees. The buildings were made of intricately plaited, lacquered grass. Each one was unique, their owners proud to demonstrate their ingenuity. In the fields, ripe wheat swayed, rustling in the breeze. Swallows darted and swooped, their beaks full of insects.

Starling paused as she descended the slope, something catching her eye. A fence now ran alongside the path and there was an arrow embedded deeply in the wood. It definitely hadn’t been there when she left. Its shaft was made of unusually dark wood, a slice of night against warm chestnut. The fletching was strange too. Instead of feathers, bats’ wings granted the arrow flight. A cave clan arrow, just like in the stories. Her fingers brushed it, as if to make sure it was real, and her expression changed to one of fear as she turned to look properly at Poa.

It was still early, but the village was very quiet, unusually still. No smoke coiled from the chimneys; no voices carried on the breeze; nothing moved. Even the animals in their barns were silent. Starling drew a shuddering, fearful breath, and the doe slipped from her shoulders. The air smelled wrong.

Twelve tried not to look.

With the scratch of talons on wood, a crow landed next to them. Its black eyes watched Starling slyly as it shuffled on the fence, its beak razor-sharp and smeared with red. The girl’s eyes flicked from the bloodstained bird to the eerily quiet village, and back again.

“No!” she whispered, shaking her head. With a cry of terror, she began to run, arms and legs pumping, already knowing she was too late.

The fish-hook tug in Twelve’s chest wiped the world away again, and when it re-formed she was standing in Poa at the edge of a deep pit on the village green. Starling was six feet below her, digging mechanically, fresh earth clotted around the great hole like blood. Sweat and mud mingled on the girl’s face, but she never broke her rhythm to wipe it away, even when it ran into her hollow eyes.

The houses stood empty and silent, their roofs black with greedy crows, prickly with arrows. The girl’s gasped breaths tore the quiet, the slice of her shovel and the soft thwack of flung earth the only sounds as the sun dropped below the horizon.

Icy-cold dread fingered its way up Twelve’s spine and she turned away, sickened and faint, her heart hammering in her chest. She didn’t want to see any more, not of this. Everywhere she looked, there were the same dark arrows resting triumphant in the hush they had wrought.

Starling climbed from the pit and fetched a wheelbarrow. Twelve squeezed her eyes shut.

Tug.